“Yes, I'm aware of it, the tobacco products market could register a further decline when the directive just approved by the European Parliament comes into force. But the decline will be much smaller than in recent years: between now and 2020, the European Commission predicts, it will not go beyond 2%. A substantially modest price to pay for cigarette manufacturers which will correspond, for European society, to the saving of many human lives (smoking in the EU is the cause of 700.000 deaths a year). And, to remain in the economic sphere, it will lead to a substantial reduction in public expenditure for the treatment of cancer and other serious diseases caused by smoking. It seems to me that for European citizens the balance can be considered positive”.
This is stated by Linda McAvan, a kind English lady who has been a European parliamentarian for 15 years, a member of the Socialist and Democrat group, and a member of the Parliamentary Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety for almost a decade, rapporteur for the anti-smoking directive approved by a large majority ( 560 votes in favour, 92 abstentions and 32 against) by the Strasbourg Assembly. A measure that aims to reform the tobacco legislation in force for 12 years in a restrictive key. But which, compared to the proposal made last December by the EU Commission, has lost a few pieces of the original rigor along the way. Abandoning the idea of equating electronic cigarettes to a drug and however granting the tobacco multinationals (marked by the blows of the overwhelming advance of e-cigarettes) generous margins of time to comply with some of the prohibitions introduced by the directive.
“Of course, like most legislative texts, this directive too – acknowledges the rapporteur – is the result of some inevitable compromises. I am certainly not pleased, for example, that the introduction of some limits has been so spread out over time”. Linda McAvan refers to the three years that the text approved now in Strasbourg allows cigarette manufacturers to eliminate menthol-based ones and even eight years (sic!) to give up putting slim, the thinner ones on the market.
“But most of it has been done”, adds the British MEP. “Right now, therefore, we can state that, with the changes that will in all probability arise from the forthcoming tripartite meetings of the European Parliament delegation with those of the Commission and the Council, the reform of the anti-smoking directive is now a reality. And that the fear of further negative consequences for companies and workers in the sector has no reason to exist. Also because in recent years, with the nationwide proliferation of smoking bans (on planes, trains, hotels, restaurants, offices, schools), whether they like it or not, smokers have already had to adapt to the restrictions" . And the producers of the tobacco chain, with the birth of the electronic cigarette and the consequent start of the production reconversion towards this new invention by the traditional cigarette manufacturers, have taken their countermeasures. Thus everything suggests that the sector market will hardly be marked by new upheavals.
These measured assessments by the British MEP – who claims that she has never smoked in her life (“my husband did, for thirty years, not anymore”, she says) but does not assume the attitudes of an intolerant anti-smoking suffragette – do not weaken the virulence of the affirmations of the exponents of the two camps: on the one hand those who support the thesis that the electronic cigarette is an effective remedy for gradually getting rid of smoking addiction, on the other hand those who fear that the diffusion of this new product will favor above all younger people to switch to traditional cigarette consumption.
In addition to the confrontation centered on the issue of health protection, in the background one can glimpse, insufficiently veiled, that originating from the enormous economic interests at stake in a market which in Europe registers trades for several billions a year. And which represents a substantial source of revenue for the treasury of all EU Member States. A source that, with the massive reduction in cigarette consumption, has significantly dried up: in Italy alone, in the first eight months of this year, tax revenues linked to tobacco fell by 455 million compared to the same period in 2012.
In this context then - argued in an editorial that appeared the day after the approval of the directive in Strasbourg in the French business newspaper "Les Echos" - the European Parliament did well, by refusing to consider the electronic cigarette a drug, to report on the ground of health the debate on an issue that is fundamentally business. As evidenced by the very intense lobbying activity implemented by all interested parties in the weeks preceding the vote of the European Parliament. “An activity which – underlined Linda McAvan, who will lead the European Parliament delegation in the imminent negotiations with the Council and the Commission – has also come to express itself with the dissemination on behalf of a tobacco multinational of documents which seemed to evoke a 'military operation'.
With maneuvers of this type, therefore, the producers of cheaper cigarettes lose out in favor of smuggling and the producers of more expensive cigarettes, which, unlike the others, do not suffer serious consequences from this remodulation of excise duties. Finally, the State, which hoped to collect more money, instead comes back again to deal with the illegal market which, if not fought also through the non-further increase in taxes, and consequently in prices, will continue to grow, and the revenues of the State to decrease. A regulation of excise duties, therefore, if applied, seems to be able to lead the tobacco market only to a situation of increasingly scarce competition, where the currently strongest and most dangerous competitor, smuggling, will gain.
(with the contribution of Giorgia Rossi)
